Rags To Riches: Hired For His Satisfaction: A Ring to Secure His Heir / Nanny for the Millionaire's Twins / The Ties that Bind

‘And how the heck do you make that out? Is my grandfather as wealthy as you are?’ she suddenly demanded.

‘No, but he is a multimillionaire,’ Alexius revealed for the first time. ‘And he and his family enjoy a comfortable lifestyle.’

‘A multimillionaire?’ Rosie gasped in panic. ‘Truthfully?’

‘Truthfully,’ Alexius confirmed.

Rosie was silenced, irritated that she had not suspected that reality for herself. After all, how likely was it that someone as rich as Alexius would have a godfather who was an ordinary man on a middling income? Suddenly she felt intimidated by what might await her in Greece.

‘I don’t want you to look and feel like a poor relation when you meet your father’s family,’ Alexius admitted.

‘Even if it’s the truth?’ she fielded between gritted teeth. ‘Why should I care about what I look like? That’s superficial.’

‘I agree but that’s how the world is,’ he responded with irrefutable logic. ‘Appearances are important.’

Her thin shoulders hunched. ‘I don’t want you spending any more money on me, and I can’t afford a new wardrobe,’ she pointed out flatly.

‘The cost is nothing to me,’ Alexius retorted with a grimace.

‘But not when it came to fixing up Bas?’ she queried sharply, thinking with relief of how well the little dog had recovered while studying Alexius, wishing he were not so beautiful that he kept on ensnaring her attention. No matter how desperately hard she tried not to look at him her gaze repeatedly swerved back to him. Her entire body tingled as she remembered the raw sensuality of his mouth on hers and the air in her lungs shortened as if she were zooming down too fast on a roller-coaster ride.

‘I would have covered the dog’s needs no matter what you did,’ Alexius countered levelly, his libido reacting to the buzz of sexual energy in the atmosphere so that he had to fight the urge to simply grab her. All those years of sexual practice and sophistication, he thought grimly, and all he wanted to do was flatten her to the seat like a marauder and have her any way she would let him. For the first time ever with a woman he was being cautious.

‘But I didn’t know that!’ Rosie yelled back at him furiously in one of the sudden explosions of temper that always took him by surprise. ‘How was I supposed to know that?’

‘I’m not a monster … You’re carrying my baby—’

‘You mean, the blob?’ Rosie snapped nastily.

Slight colour tinged his exotic cheekbones and his handsome mouth folded. ‘It did look like a blob. Was I supposed to lie to the woman who told me she valued honesty?’

Out of nowhere a surge of stinging tears assailed Rosie’s eyes and she blinked them back hurriedly and reached spontaneously for the hand braced on the space between them. ‘No, I don’t want you to feel that you have to lie or pretend for my sake … I don’t ever want you to feel like th-that!’ she stammered.

‘You’re crying!’ Alexius noticed, aghast at the development.

‘No, it’s OK … OK!’ Rosie exclaimed, frantically grabbing at and stroking his hand in apology. ‘Remember what Dmitri said? My hormones are all over the place at the moment … The tears just come for no good reason—’

‘That doesn’t make sense,’ Alexius pronounced, logical to the nth degree and hooking his hand into hers to draw her onto his lap without even thinking about it. Getting his arms round her tiny body at last felt amazingly good. ‘I’m sorry I called the baby a blob and hurt your feelings.’

Rosie twisted to look at him with big, round green eyes. ‘Are you feeling all right?’

In surely the most awkward position ever allotted to a man on the make, Alexius caught her chin and claimed the delicious moistness of her mouth and kissed her with devouring urgency. Rosie shivered in eager response, feeling her body light up on all systems go inside her skin. As she twisted, Alexius lifted her and brought her round sideways, pushing her bottom into stirring contact with his healthy erection. Her eyes opened even wider as a deft hand travelled up her skirt and slid between her thighs to cup the heart of her where she ached. ‘Alex!’ she gasped.

He wrenched up the skirt and fought with her panties to access the warm, welcoming wetness of his fantasies, and he groaned with satisfaction against her swollen mouth as he got there and discovered that she was as ready as he was. His thumb circled her clitoris and set off a chain reaction through her pelvis that she could not control. She writhed, she moaned, made not the smallest attempt to escape, intoxicated as she was by the way he was teasing her overexcited body. She buried her mouth against his strong brown throat, kissing him, drinking in the glorious hot male scent of his flesh like an addict, all of her senses up and away on a magical tour of reacquaintance. With one finger, he slid inside and she ground down her bottom onto the thrust of his arousal, helpless in the grip of the most driving need she had ever experienced, feeling the gathering storm at the heart of her, rising up through her like an unstoppable force of nature. She splintered from the inside out with the intensity of the pleasure, her body jerking in the successive spasms of ecstasy, her head falling weakly against his shoulder in the aftermath.

‘Feel better, latria mou?’ Alexius prompted thickly, wanting so much more but satisfied to have smashed the platonic barriers she had set up between them.

‘Like I’ve died and gone to heaven,’ she whispered honestly, daring to open her eyes, catch a glimpse of the busy city street the limo was traversing and shocked by the sight. ‘I can’t believe you just did what you did.’

Alexius released his pent-up breath slowly above her head and held on tight to her with both arms, sealing them both into the intimacy she had sought to deny. He had been tempted to whip off that last barrier and sink deep into her but in fact he could hardly believe he had gone as far as he had in the back of a limo either. It wasn’t him—he was a conventional guy. He didn’t do stuff like this. There was something about her that made him more spontaneous, not that he thought that was much of an excuse for behaving like a horny teenager. She lifted her tousled head and gave him a guilty but sunny smile of appreciation. It made him feel ten feet tall and the painful throb of his own unsated body receded in receipt of it.

‘Oh, my goodness,’ Rosie mumbled, lifting her arms to break his hold and scramble off him again. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so selfish … I didn’t do anything for you—’

‘It’s not a problem,’ Alexius drawled.

But Rosie could see from the cut of his trousers that there was a problem, a very big problem from his point of view. It was, however, a decidedly positive revelation for Rosie to realise that he could still summon up that amount of desire for a body she had always regarded as not that desirable on male terms. ‘You know I could … I mean, I haven’t done that before but I’m sure you could give me directions—’

In receipt of that offer, Alexius was startled when he found himself laughing out loud and he gave her a heart-stopping smile that welded her embarrassed eyes to him. ‘Not in the back of a car in broad daylight. Some other time … I’ll survive. Touching you again was worth it,’ he told her huskily.

Hot colour washed Rosie’s face and she suddenly felt incredibly shy and unsure of herself.

‘Come home with me after we do the wardrobe thing,’ Alexius urged.

It was the key for confusion and indecision to engulf Rosie like a tidal wave because she suffered instantaneous cold feet. ‘Wouldn’t it be wiser to write off what just happened as a little slip?’

The last glimmerings of his smile died away. He stared steadily back at her, his gorgeous eyes pained. ‘A mistake and a little slip? Is that the sum total of what we have?’

‘You’re the best judge of that,’ Rosie whispered, knowing she was already in so deep with him she might as well have been buried alive. The raw sexual attraction between them was undeniable but were there any other layers for him beyond her conception of the blob?

On her side of the fence, layer was piling onto layer with regard to her feelings about Alexius Stavroulakis. She couldn’t look at him—even when he was being difficult—without wanting him. She couldn’t look at him without thinking that he was beautiful. He was absolutely never out of her thoughts. He had insisted on accompanying her to pick up Bas when he was released from the animal clinic and had turned up with a plush new basket for her pet. He also unfailingly phoned her every day to check that she was all right, although he never seemed to have much to say when he did call and the silences gnawed on her nerves until she learned to fill those awkward moments with inconsequential chatter. She was falling in love with Alexius and had no idea how to call a halt to that seemingly inevitable process, even though she knew that she was only storing up trouble for the future.

A svelte stylist took Rosie’s measurements and questioned her about her clothing preferences. Rosie made no objection and she was very much ashamed of her change of heart. But after what had happened in the limousine with Alexius she was ridiculously reluctant to argue with him again. She had noticed that he had told her very little about her grandfather and his family yet clearly he knew them all. She was convinced that if Alexius was advising her to dress up there was probably a good reason for it and she cringed at the suspicion that her grandfather might well be embarrassed by a cheaply and casually clad granddaughter who clearly came from a much poorer background. Could she come to care for people who were willing to judge her purely on her appearance?

The limo drew up outside the building where she lived and Alexius gave her a look, an ebony brow slanting up in wicked question, and she knew exactly what he was silently asking, wished she didn’t, wished even more that her treacherous body didn’t leap at the prospect of going to bed with him again. It would just be sex, no doubt fantastic sex, but it would only complicate things. It was, she acknowledged, a great shame that she had slept with Alexius before she got to know him, but what was done was done and if they did become intimate again she wanted her brain rather than her body to make that decision for her.

One last exam and then Greece, she told herself encouragingly. Her mind would be clearer then, her instincts less prone to her present horrendous desire to lean on Alexius for support. That wasn’t a good idea because he might not be there for the long haul … only time would tell. But what if he was already prepared to phone some other woman to satisfy the need she had stirred up? That fear kept Rosie awake half the night as she finally accepted that she couldn’t have it both ways, no matter how much she wanted to. Either she slept with Alexius or accepted that he would eventually and maybe even sooner sleep with someone else.

CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_681bec95-3b59-5d2a-841d-d62a54b22029)

ROSIE sat on the wonderfully comfortable seat, buckled up for take-off. The seat was comfy but she was not. The sheer opulence of the private jet spooked her. Bas lay in his basket on the seat beside her, slumped in an awkward pose, one front leg enclosed in a cast. He was quieter since the assault, more nervous too, Rosie conceded with regret, frantic to think of anything other than the forthcoming ordeal of meeting her father’s family in Athens. She didn’t feel like herself any more, not sheathed in the very elegant little green dress that nipped in at her bust, waist and hips to give her a shape she had not known she had. Every garment had been professionally altered to suit her height and she didn’t even want to think about how much money such perfect tailoring might have cost. Used to shopping in children’s departments to find any kind of a fit, Rosie was unnerved by the fashionable expensive clothing that had been delivered to her bedsit to fill not only one but three accompanying suitcases. Would she be expected to change clothes several times a day like a member of the royal family?

Her exams were over but she had not been free to go out on the town with her classmates to celebrate the night before. Not only could she not drink but she had also been reluctant to face Alexius with bruised eyes and the pallor of someone who had stayed out too late. But since when had she become so concerned about what she looked like? That new pitiful self-consciousness that had her sitting in high heels that flattered her legs but that nonetheless pinched like the very devil infuriated Rosie. Everything that had once mattered to her from her fierce independence to her freedom seemed to have been wrenched from her. She thought of her baby and mentally apologised to it for her troubled mood.

Meanwhile, gloriously unaware of the doubts and insecurities assailing his passenger, indeed assuming that she was looking forward to meeting her wealthy relatives, Alexius worked with determination at his laptop on the other side of the saloon. Watching her board, her pale hair bouncing on her shoulders and shining in the sunlight, her chin lifting in challenge when she saw his attention lingering, had been quite sufficient. He saw her, he wanted her like a starving man faced with a banquet: it was that simple, that shamefully basic. And Alexius didn’t like feeling like that one little bit. Subjected to that galling heat when he least welcomed it, he brooded on the mystery of it and longed to shake free of it. The maddening hunger she had infected him with like a virus outraged his pride and threatened his self-control. He wondered if greater access to that enticing little body would provide the cure that would kill the constant ache of arousal and programme his brain back to cold normality. He would get bored with her—he always got bored with his lovers, he reflected with sudden satisfaction.

‘Where will I be staying tonight?’ Rosie asked abruptly.

‘At your grandfather’s …’ Alexius raised a questioning black brow at the expression of dismay his answer had earned. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘I assumed I’d be staying at a hotel … I mean, I don’t know these people and it’s not going to help that I arrive pregnant and unmarried, is it?’ Rosie pointed out apprehensively. ‘It could be very uncomfortable for me.’

‘That’s an understandable concern,’ Alexius positively purred, delighted to step into the breach in her hour of apparent need. ‘I should have thought of that. You’ll want to get to know Socrates at a more relaxed pace than you would enjoy as a house guest.’

‘Yes …’ Rosie awarded him a look of relief at his grasp of her plight. ‘I’m glad you can see that.’

‘I’m not as insensitive as you like to believe,’ Alexius told her, a shot of adrenalin firing through him, his devious streak having a field day at her expense. On a high of gratification, he stood up and even bent down to stroke a daring forefinger over Bas’s exposed spine as he moved past. Bas twisted his head round, his bat ears unfurling like sails, and bared his crooked teeth in a growled warning that Alexius should keep his distance.

‘No, Bas,’ Rosie said firmly.